The SPDR S&P Retail ETF, also known by its ticker, XRT, is up less than 10% for 2019 — coming in just above the modest 4% year-to-date gain for energy, the worst-performing sector in the S&P 500. The S&P itself is up by more than 25% this year.

Black Friday also remains a question mark for many physical retailers struggling to attract shoppers to their stores. With online platforms making it easy to compare prices, expectations for the nationwide shopping holiday are dimming as the spread of shopping options continues to widen.

“It really just comes down to that online, brick-and-mortar split,” Nadig said Monday. “I like CLIX here, which is the ProShares Long/Short [ETF]. You get long the good names in the space, the Amazons of the world, and you go short all the names we just saw. It’s having a great year.”

“Stick to the global plays. That’s where you’re going to get that emerging market consumer story,” Nadig said, adding that he didn’t like the popular XRT ETF for its heavy brick-and-mortar tilt and its exposure to smaller-cap companies.

“That’s an EM story. That’s an Asia story,” Seymour said in the same “ETF Edge” interview. “If you barbelled it, I think high-end discretionary is working right now and the lower end is also working. So, I like that acquisition and I think you could see more consolidation.”

At the same time, some domestically focused retail stocks are “priced for perfection,” said Seymour, who appears regularly on CNBC’s “Fast Money.”

“If you look at a Target and a Walmart, while they’ve been massive outperformers, at some point, valuation does matter,” he said. “And I think, in this environment, they’ve been priced to perfection, but I’ve been wrong there for months.”